No Gold, But There Are Silver Linings

A late night dinner.  From left, Alex, Willie, Ilya and Adrian

Victoria Road Trip  |  This impromptu road trip was quickly organized for the Spring break. There was an ample interest shown by three juniors which led us to Victoria for this Champs tournament. The trip started very early on Friday. Waking up at 4:30 am before picking Ilya Tihanenoks, and brothers, Alex and William Baumann from their homes before heading to Tsawwassen to catch the 7:00 am ferry. Upon reaching Swartz Bay, the sky was clearing and it had not rain for a few hours. Lucky for us the whole three days turned out to be sunny and dry except for brief shower on Saturday afternoon. This gave us the chance to use the outdoor public tennis courts near our accommodation for practices and warm-ups. The matches were all played indoor at the Oak Bay Recreational Centre. There are seven tennis courts under 2 white bubbles. The three juniors on this trip are all getting to a level where they should be playing against better competitions. And this is a perfect Champs tournament to do so. Ed Baker, the tournament director, had used a full feed-in consolation draw format.  Which means even if a player loses in the quarter-finals, the player will move into the consolation draw. Any player proceeding to win the consolation draw will come in 5th in the tournament. This is a good deal, and more matches for the juniors. 

Ilya warming up at 7 am for an early Sunday morning match.

Ilya serving in his 5th place match.

Tihanenoks' first match against Ben Thompson of Kelowna in the Boys' Under 18 singles was full of errors. He lost his focus early and was unable to settle down during the match. He quickly found himself on the losing end, much to his disappointment of playing well on this trip.  His first consolation match is pro-set against a local boy Pier Zdan. Once again he was down early, but fought back to even things at 6-6 before winning the match at 8-7. His next match was against Zoran Stojkovic, also from Victoria, who was his doubles partner at the Stanley Park tournament last July. On paper, the result would have tilted in favour of Stojkovic. Tihanenoks' game came together early and gave him the confidence boost in the first set, winning it 6-3. In the second set, games moved back and forth before Stojkovic grabbed the chance to level the match at 6-4. With a set a piece, the super-tiebreaker was played in place of a third set. Nail biting battle ensued. After he grabbed a mini-break on the first point, Tihanenoks lost 5 points in a row, before he crawled back to 6-6. The tie-breaker see-sawed from there until Tihanenoks reached his first match point. He failed to convert it at 9-8 and again at 10-9. At 10-10, Tihanenoks sent his forehand long and gave this opportunity to his opponent to served out the set and match. A strong forehand approach to Stojkovic's backhand corner made his opponent dumped the ball into the net. Match point saved, and 11-11. A forehand error from Stojkovic set up match point number 3 for Tihanenoks. This time it is for real, when another forehand from Stojkovic went long after a short baseline exchanged. Onto the finals of the consolation draw and a chance for the 5th place standing. So who was his opponent? It was none other than Ben Thompson who had beaten him in the first round of the main draw. This time there was no revenge in the making. Tihanenoks played better, but Thompson was the more consistent player and handled the match in an almost identical scoreline.

Alex quickly disposed of Michael Rossi in his first round match.

Alex Baumann, who is only 13 years old, and is one of our promising juniors in our program. Facing his first round opponent, Victoria's Michael Rossi, he showed no mercy from the beginning. He moved Rossi around the court with his placements and power, and earned himself an easy victory. Moving onto the quarter-finals of the under 14 event, he would meet the number one seeded player, Mark Nguyen of Vancouver. Nguyen is currently ranked eighth in the province in the under 14 category. Baumann felt an instant reversal of fortune. He must felt like Rossi in the previous match. He proved no match for the top seed, losing easily. Joining in the consolation draw at the semi-final stage, he had little trouble beating Brook Hoole of Victoria. This set up the 5th place match with Steven, the younger of the Shen brothers, from Coquitlam. Broken twice on his serves, he fell 0-3 early in the set. Baumann did not give up on things and continued to fight back. He tried to break his opponent's serve on many occasions to try and get back into the set, but could not succeed. He lost the first set 6-3. After the first three games in the second set, Alex fell behind once again to 0-3. Baumann was still determined to get that elusive break on Shen's serve. He dug deep into himself and begun putting the pressure on Shen's backhand with his groundstrokes. Shen started to falter, making unforced errors, one after another. This led to the first service break on Shen's serve. The match which had looked bleak for Baumann just just minutes before, was begining to turn the corner. He even up the second set at 3-3 with a second service break, and eventually went on to lead the set at 5-4. It looked like the match was heading for a super-tiebreaker in the third, but Shen was not done yet. He battled back to level the set and broke Baumann's serve in the next game to lead 6-5. This time Baumann could not break Shen's serve to stay in the match, and went on to lose the set 7-5. Clearly Alex was disappointed, but it was a good match for both players, nonetheless.

Willie served well in his opening match against Scott Bocking.

Willie Baumann is the older brother by a couple of years. Just like Alex, Willie is also very athletic and competitive. Playing his first round match in the under 16 singles, he faced a strong opponent. I don't know what to expect from this Baumann. He was relatively new to me, and I was not too familar with his style of play. As his match progressed against Scott Bocking from Chemainus, I thought he certainly had a good chance to pull off a win. He came through the first set in an easy 6-3 score. And I thought he could easily hang on to win the second set as well. I guessed I was wrong. Bocking picked up his game and came ahead at 6-4. Since this was the main draw, a full third set was played. Willie held on to win the match, picking up a 6-2 score in the third. The next round he had to face Robert Fung of Vancouver. Fung, seeded fourth in this event, is a much stronger player. I knew Baumann would be hard-pressed to win his quarter-final match. As expected there was no contest from Baumann in that match. This set up a match against Shawnagan Lake's Laurent Vincent in the quarter-finals stage of the consolation draw. Baumann found himself down 1-4 after the first 5 games before stagging a comeback, winning 6 straight games to lead 7-4 in the pro-set. Just when victory was within his grasp, Vincent made a tactical change. Gone are those powerful baseline rallies he would employ earlier. Holding back on the pace, he began slicing his groundstrokes. Baumann quickly saw his lead slipped away. Realizing a change of tactics is much needed, he too changed his game to offset the lack of pace from his opponent shots. Points see-sawed back and forth, and much to Baumann disappointment, Vincent levelled the match at 7-7. The tie-break challenge was even closer. In the end Baumann lost the tie-breaker at 7-5 and the match.